Twitter can now tell if you’re happy, or sad… or hungover

This is interesting. Twitter has released new data showing that feeling down on Mondays isn’t just restricted to Garfield and that there are certain times of the year when we’re much more likely to be happy than others.

The social network put together in a bid to see what the usage of different words and phrases in 2013 by day of the week and month tells you a lot about how the world tweets. It then turned that data set into a ratio of tweets containing those words in English per million posted.

While a number of the findings are pretty much as expected — Sundays are a pretty big day for the word “hangover” for example — others require a little more extrapolation. For instance, Twitter’s data shows a fairly substantial spike in the word “happy” on Tuesdays in January. As it explains though, that’s not just down to relief over it not being Monday any more. In 2013, New Year’s day fell on a Tuesday, which would account for a fairly substantial number of instances of the word being used.

While Twitter’s data is interesting, it is worth noting that it doesn’t go as deep into sentiment as some other forms of Twitter analysis. It’s also worth bearing in mind that this kind of simple linguistic analysis can’t really pick up on things like sarcasm.

Still, if you can get an idea when most people are late for work, you probably stand a better chance of avoiding traffic.